George Mcgovern Joins The Ranks Of Inquisitors Who Would Lynch Reagan

COMMENTARY

It isn`t too early to sit down, put one`s feet up on the desk, lower the eyelids, and ask: What exactly is it that the public prosecutors want out of all this?

Why not let George McGovern speak for them? His qualifications are pretty good. He is certainly entitled to laugh at the notion that McGovernism was killed in 1972. Quite wrong. It didn`t rise, Antaeus-like from the ground in the way that Goldwaterism did, sweeping to power 16 years after its great defeat in 1964. At least, intermediary political signs suggest that in 1988 McGovernism will not come to power. Halfway between Goldwater`s defeat and Reagan`s triumph we had Nixon, which was a step in the right direction in both senses of the word. Halfway between McGovern`s defeat and 1988 we had Mondale, who carried the state of Minnesota. Narrowly.

Speaking in San Francisco recently, George McGovern told a crowd of 3,000, Democrats and Republicans in approximately equal numbers, that Ronald Reagan was not fit to govern. He began with that charge, so to speak the apex, rather like the lawyer who begins his address to the jury by saying that the defendant should be executed, and then proceeds slowly to build the case against him.

The prosecutor`s technique is interesting, because normally you begin the other way, as the prosecution began the other way in dealing with Richard Nixon in 1973-74. The gradual accumulation of evidence, over a period that stretched week after week, month after month, until suddenly the noose was tight, and, one dramatic day, the trapdoor fell open.

McGovern`s approach is the pattern being followed by the hot-blooded detractors. Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina is an example from the Senate (he judged Reagan to be guilty of lying before the second day`s hearings had begun).

Why not, said George McGovern in effect, take that performance and draw from it two conclusions, take your choice. The first is that the president knew all about it, in which case he is a liar and a criminal. The alternative is that he knew nothing about it, in which case he is not master of his own household, has become merely a White House fixture, and under the circumstances is not fit to govern.

George McGovern began to enunciate his syllabus of grievances. The first of these is that Reagan is the first president who has not in recent years concluded an arms deal with the Soviet Union. And why is it that he has not done so? Because he does not really wish to disarm. And why does he not really wish to disarm? Because he is a creature of the Pentagon and of those who desire an arms race. And what is the result of being a creature of the Pentagon and of the arms race? Well, it means for one thing the possibility of a nuclear war, and for another it means that we are gradually starving out education, students, the poor and -- very important -- environmentalism.

How was it that so many people voted for Reagan, enthusiastically in 1980 and overwhelmingly in 1984? Because, McGovern explained, he is a likable fellow. But never mind, the polls have made it clear time after time after time that though the voters like Reagan, they do not like Reaganism. And now that they have come to realize -- listen to this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, because this is the main point -- that the man the American people voted for is simply incompetent to discharge his office, we can now expect the dissolution of the Reagan revolution, and we can make our way back in the peace-loving, progressive, collectivist social orientation that began with FDR and took us through Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.

So: We begin by postulating Reagan`s incompetence. That is the first page. The last page is the verdict: Reagan is through. Preferably, he resigns -- impeachment is, of course, not entirely out of the question; for instance, if it is established that he lied about a legal crime he sanctioned. But the important thing is to think of him as, well, the man who attends the ceremonial functions during the next two years, while a Democratic Congress runs the country.